(The Economic Collapse Blog)—It has become glaringly obvious that we are way too dependent on our computers. The “largest IT outage in history” has thrown the entire global economy into a state of chaos, and we are being told that it could take “weeks” to fully recover. Countless flights have been canceled, hospital services have been disrupted, online services are down for a number of big banks, and we are being told that millions of workers may not receive paychecks this month.
If a single software “glitch” can cause this much insanity, what would happen if the Internet was suddenly not available for an extended period of time?
A lot of people initially speculated that a cyberattack may be happening, but the truth is that virtually all of the chaos that we have been witnessing was caused by a CrowdStrike update…
The issue was caused by a technical problem that global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said it had identified in its software and was working to resolve. CrowdStrike provides antivirus software to Microsoft for its Windows devices.
“Earlier today, a CrowdStrike update was responsible for bringing down a number of IT systems globally,” Microsoft said in a statement to CBS News.
To me, this is yet another example of the rampant incompetence that is plaguing our society today.
Didn’t anyone test this update before they released it to the entire world?
The CEO of CrowdStrike says that the issue has been identified and the problem has now been fixed…
In a statement, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said the issue had been identified and a solution was being implemented. He added that “this is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”
Unfortunately, this isn’t going to do much good for users that are now dealing with the infamous “Blue Screen of Death”…
The notorious Blue Screen of Death is popping up everywhere, from banks to supermarkets and media outlets, causing widespread panic and confusion. All United, Delta and American Airlines flights were grounded amid the chaos.
According to one expert, if you are repeatedly getting the “Blue Screen of Death” right now there “is not a huge amount you can do”…
Mr Pardo continued: “Unfortunately, there is not a huge amount you can do if your computer has the blue screen of death.
“Computer users will need to wait for their IT team to resolve the issue, and many people may need to work from their phone or use a pen and paper in the meantime.
“This is a wake-up call for all the companies that have been floored by this attack. Organizations need to urgently review their disaster recovery plans to make sure they can deal with such problems.”
This tech disaster has already caused tremendous supply chain disruptions all over the planet, and CNBC is reporting that it could take “days or even weeks” to completely resolve this crisis…
The CrowdStrike software bug that crashed Microsoft operating systems and caused the largest IT outage in history caused disruptions at U.S. and global ports, with highly complex air freight systems suffering the heaviest hit, according to logistics experts, as global airlines grounded flights.
“Planes and cargo are not where they are supposed to be and it will take days or even weeks to fully resolve,” Niall van de Wouw, chief air freight officer at supply chain consulting firm Xeneta, said in a statement shared with CNBC. “This is a reminder of how vulnerable our ocean and air supply chains are to IT failure.”
We certainly didn’t need this right now, because our economic numbers have already been heading in the wrong direction quite rapidly.
Meanwhile, the airline industry has been thrown into a state of complete and utter chaos…
Over 1,800 flights had been canceled within, into or out of the U.S. as of Friday morning, and more than 5,000 others were delayed, according to the flight tracking service, FlightAware. Globally, more than 28,000 flights were delayed early Friday.
I feel so badly for those that are stuck at an airport at this moment.
If you are one of those people, you might not get to where you are supposed to go for a while.
This IT outage has also forced the cancellation of surgeries all over the nation…
Gary Baulos in woke up at 3:30 a.m. on Friday for open heart surgery to fix eight blockages. A call from the hospital in Paducah, Kentucky, soon altered his plans. The procedure would be rescheduled because of a global technology outage that was derailing operations.
The 73-year-old retiree made the best of the situation, grabbing a breakfast of bacon, eggs, and pancakes at an IHOP before heading home to Marion. “I guess I’ll do it some other time,” he said.
Not everyone was as sanguine. Lydia, who asked that her last name be withheld for privacy reasons, had her surgery at the University Hospital of Maryland canceled. A waiting room full of patients and family members all got the news that operations were being placed on hold.
Were there people that died because they couldn’t get the care that they needed?
I hope not.
We are also being told that “millions” of workers may not receive paychecks this month because so many systems are down right now…
Millions of workers are at risk of not receiving their paychecks this month amid a global outage that could last weeks.
Several of America’s biggest banks saw their systems crash this morning, preventing people from accessing their accounts or receiving or sending money.
If you are supposed to get a paycheck on Friday, you are probably at greatest risk.
The CEO of the Global Payroll Association says that her organization has “received complaints from a number of clients who couldn’t access their payroll software because of the outage”…
The Global Payroll Association (GPA) warned that people ‘risk going without their wages’ because their employers or banks rely on CrowdStrike for cybersecurity protection.
It remains unclear how widespread the payroll disruption is, but Melanie Pizzey, the founder and CEO of GPA said her company had received complaints from a number of clients who couldn’t access their payroll software because of the outage.
Payroll systems typically need to be notified of any issues that would stop direct deposits from going through at least two days before the payday for the issue to be resolved in time.
This certainly isn’t the end of the world, but it is yet another example that shows how incredibly vulnerable we are.
I think that life was much simpler when we all relied on pen and paper.
Sadly, this is the world that we live in now, and much more chaos is on the way.
Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
